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Seth and the lads were the breadwinners; Thomas’s passing would make little impact except he had kept her warm at night. Mind, for some long time now the drink had affected his performance in that area. ‘I could hardly refuse, the way he insisted – it’d have looked funny.’
    ‘Aye, I suppose so.’ Seth sat down at the table. Looking at his mother, he said quietly, ‘Quick, was it?’
    ‘Your da? Aye, he’d gone before I got there.’ Kitty, too, sat down, glancing at Pearl as she said, ‘Put the kettle on, I need a cup of tea.’ Thomas had looked different, lying there in the street so still and sort of small with the pool of blood about his head. She had known it was him, of course, and yet it wasn’t. It could have been a waxwork dummy, like the ones the travelling showmen had. She shivered, a nameless fear making her flesh creep.
    It was a full month after Thomas had been buried that Kitty discovered, poor performance or not, his swan song was going to add yet another weight to Seth’s shoulders. She was pregnant again.

Chapter 3
    It had been nearly eighteen months since Thomas had died. The new baby, another boy his mother had named Patrick, had been born in the spring of 1899. Apart from this event there had been little change in the day-to-day functioning of the Croft family. The role Seth had taken on even before his father’s death, that of head of the family, had only been strengthened with the passing of time. When he’d flatly refused to allow more lodgers taking up residence in the front room, Kitty had not argued with him. Instead, on the occasions she knew Seth and the lads were otherwise engaged, she entertained the odd sailor for an hour or two.
    Pearl couldn’t remember exactly when she’d become aware of her mother’s activities and what it meant, but without a word being said between them, she knew she had to keep the knowledge to herself. If Seth had found out what their mother was about, there would have been hell to pay.
    He was a strange mixture, was Seth, Pearl mused, one bitterly cold afternoon in January 1900. She now understood the nature of the work her brothers did for Mr McArthur, but Seth was as straightlaced as a clergy-man in some things. He wouldn’t allow drink in the house, not even a bottle of beer, although Pearl suspected her mother kept a bottle of gin hidden somewhere or other. It wasn’t in their bedroom though. Since her father’s death her mother had insisted she sleep upstairs with her and the babies, less for company and more so she could see to James or Patrick if they woke crying in the night. Pearl didn’t mind this though, since her mother’s bed was a hundred times more comfortable than the desk bed had been.
    Her thoughts returning to her brother, Pearl recalled the furore which had occurred after the celebrations to welcome in the new century a few days ago. Fred and Walter had been out on the town with some pals and had come home definitely the worse for wear. Seth had read them the Riot Act good and proper. He wasn’t against a drink, he’d insisted, but once you had one too many, it had got you.
    Pearl’s hands paused in the dough she was kneading. It was their da who’d coloured Seth’s thinking, she was sure of it. And Seth was a thinker all right, bright as a button too. If he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth he’d have gone far. When he talked about the Boer War and the Troubles in Ireland and things like that, he seemed to come alive. She didn’t understand half of what he said but it didn’t matter, she could listen to him for hours.
    ‘Pearl? Where are you? Come an’ see to the chamberpot.’
    Her mother’s querulous voice broke into her reverie. Pearl was off school because Kitty was a victim of the influenza epidemic which had hit the country. Hundreds of people a day were dying from it, according to the newspaper reports, but after being ill over Christmas and into the New Year, her mother was now on the